Richie Roberts

Richard M. "Richie" Roberts (28 November 1937-) was an American defense attorney and narcotics detective from Newark, New Jersey. He was best known for taking down Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas in 1975.

Biography
Richard M. Roberts was born in The Bronx, New York City on 28 November 1937 to a Jewish family, and he moved to Newark, New Jersey at the age of eight. He served in the US Marine Corps from 1955 to 1961, and he attended Upsala College and Rutgers University. In 1963, he became an Essex County detective, and he became a licensed attorney in 1971. During the late 1960s, Captain Lou Toback put him in charge of a task force that was tasked with hunting down local drug suppliers, and Roberts investigated Frank Lucas' organization. He witnessed the organization's violence and discovered that it smuggled heroin into the United States in soldiers' coffins, and Lucas was arrested in 1975; he ironically served as Lucas' defense counsel. In 2017, he was arrested for theft, perjury, and tax crimes.